When I joined Peel Ports Group in September 2024, I wasn’t quite sure what
to expect. I was fresh out of a 5-year stint with Afiniti, an AI company, and had closed the door on a 20-year working relationship with Virgin Media. I had never worked in the
maritime sector before.
But I was excited by the Group’s ambition to transform its technological operations to make the lives of its employees easier. I was able to hit the ground running when I joined, picking up various projects and taking a dive into PPG’s new automation and technology programme – Tech365, an initiative designed to modernise all areas of our operations.
Ambitious projects like that need a sturdy team behind them, and I was given the reins to assemble a designated team responsible for delivering technology to change our ways of working for the better, making our operations more efficient, our ports safer, and helping the business grow.
A large part of my role involves the management of a team of project managers and business analysts and collaborating with IT, Engineering, and colleagues across the organisation, to see how Tech365 can support them, and the feedback has been excellent.
We’ve built some incredible momentum too. We’re introducing a new terminal operating system in Heysham. We’re also standardising our terminals on the same version of CommTrac to lay the groundwork for future technological advancements. And we recently
celebrated the arrival of a new electromagnetic spreader in Sheerness.
It’s incredibly fulfilling to use technology to make a positive impact across the Group. At its core, the programme is about making people’s lives easier and helping the business to grow, and it’s a privilege to be implementing this across the group as we become more data and technology driven as a business.